


Second Time Lucky

by Tyranno



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types, spideypool - Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, POV Wade Wilson, discussion of canonical child sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 12:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8490454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyranno/pseuds/Tyranno
Summary: You remember having fights when you were much younger, when your arms were chubby and stumpy. It was less about the results and more about the actions anyway, the thunder of your heart and the delicious possibility of winning, this time. 
Your first fight with Peter is nothing like that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the stuff Peter mentions in this fic, it's semi-canonical. As in, it was referenced in two PSA comics, ties pretty neatly into Peter's backstory, but hasn't been mentioned since. It's probably best if you read it for yourself, which you can do [here.](http://www.ep.tc/problems/fifteen/index.html)
> 
>  
> 
> Also, all of this is in Wade's POV :)

You remember having fights when you were much younger, when your arms were chubby and stumpy. It was mostly flailing and shoving, trying your hardest to be deadly but failing badly. It was less about the results and more about the actions anyway, the thunder of your heart and the delicious possibility of winning, this time.

Your first fight with Peter is nothing like that. He's making no sense, and the part of you that always went in for self-flagellation wants him to leave. You are older now, your arms hard and sharp, and you know what you are doing. What you are trying to do, even if you only realize it later.

He fights like a hummingbird, almost too fast to see, but he's only batting you away, blocking and redirecting. He keeps catching your foot, wrist, knee, head, and turning you away, spinning you around. It's endlessly frustrating, his passiveness—you lunge for him and are halfway through a tackle when he twists, impossibly, tossing you into a lampshade. It shatters against you, lining glass down your spine like a stegosaurus. You hiss and pause, a hand raised instinctively to shield your back.

“Please,” He says, or maybe it's “Listen,”— you can barely hear him over the pound of blood in your ears.

You lash out. A fist catches him square in the face—he flinches and it misses his eye—with a crack that hangs in the thin apartment air even after he stumbles back up. It's still ringing dully in your ears while he looks at you, irritated and a little weary, but not surprised.

His cheekbone is broken.

All the anger goes out of you like a popped balloon and you plunge back into familiar cold waters.

He sees your expression and his finger drop from prodding at his face—his healing has already swollen and purpled the his cheek, the bruise will be gone in two hours—and he is pawing at your shoulders, gingerly touching your back. His voice is soft and strained and ceaseless.

You watch the worry lines and dark circles of his beautiful face slip in and out of the light from the only remaining lamp and wonder if you could have done the worst possible job of this. Of all of this.

“It's over,” You say.

 

*

 

You met Peter at a party about a year and a half ago, probably the only one either of you had attended. Well, attended _and_ actually been invited to. And you say _met_ , but—nevermind.

It was a simple, classy affair, and, according to the invite, Tony stark was turning over yet another new leaf. He was probably trying to forge new bonds, strengthen old ones, and/or keep an eye on you. You didn't really mind which.

Apart from the dazzling living room, the rest of the penthouse was cloaked in a deep blue shadow, the walls too wide and empty for you to bother scrabbling around for a light switch. It was so dark you didn't even see him, at first. You were trying to get drunk and were on the third bottle of champagne and going pretty strong, when you noticed his silhouette against the window, in the absence of city lights, and your bottle dropped soundlessly onto mint shag carpet. In the darkness, the soft gleam of his eyes, you could make his silhouette into anything, anyone.

He stepped into the square of light from the door-frame and you damn-near gasped.

“You're gorgeous,” you said.

He made that odd face like he didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. In the next few years he'd make that face a lot.

You didn't recognize it yet, and you mistook the twisting of his eyebrows for disgust or disbelief. “Sorry I—”

“Don't worry about it,” He said and gathered your hands in his hands. He was drunk too, you realized then, his face was puffy around his eyes and his gaze was a little watery. “I like being called gorgeous.”

You couldn't stop your heart from lurching, you couldn't stop the rush of light-headedness like pitching forwards over a cliff. You wanted to stop falling in love with everyone who didn't cringe away from you, you wanted to take preventative measures against the heartbreak but they never stuck, so you pull him a little closer and tried not to think about how he'd be revolted tomorrow.

“What's it like, being gorgeous?” you asked him.

“You should know,” He said and patted your forearms and tenderly gave them a little squeeze. He was closer then and you could smell him. He smelled like soap, shampoo and alcohol.

His words set off twinges in your heart. You wondered if you could just push him away, let him wander Tony's dark apartment until he washed up hungover with all the other smashed party guests (hopefully not including Tony himself). He was gripping your arms pretty securely and you wondered if you could actually prise him off. You wondered if you actually wanted to.

“You have nice forearms,” He said. His voice sounded a little lost, like he was far away, and he dropped his head on your shoulder.

“You can't spend all evening admiring my physique,” You said, trying to usher him upwards and towards the rest of the party. You dien't want him to leave but you desperately, desperately didn't want him to hate you.

You found you couldn't remove his fingers from your arms. You tried to force him but his fingers grip—not tightly, but sturdily—like he was welded on. He watched you with an expression halfway between sheepish and pleased, eyes suddenly bright and focused. “Can't I?”

 

*

 

He took you to meet his mother—“ _Aunt_ ,” he corrected, endlessly—and you spent the whole car journey expecting him to turn around. He drove you down a dozen, two dozen broad and busy new york roads while the man-made landscape around you gradually inched lower and lower until you were in the suburbs and trees littered the spaces between houses and you saw parts of the sky you forgot existed while you were surrounded by skyscrapers.

He parked about half a mile away, and when he turned to you you expected him to tell you to stay in the car. You expected him to tell you to forget you ever saw that place, to go home before she saw you. Instead he sighed and looked at you half-weary, half-apologetic. “I'm sorry I didn't take you earlier. She's been dying to meet you,” He said, touching your knee, “I just… It's not that I don't trust you. One of my exes was kinda in the mob—well, her father was—and when I pissed him off by taking some undercover photos of him and his gang, he tried to have Aunt May taken hostage. She was visiting relatives in another state so nothing happened, but it's scary to think about, you know?”

You nodded.

He smiled.

He lead you out onto the street. It took all day to drive out there and you could taste winter in the sharpness of the evening air. Leaves tumbled out of the trees on both sides of the street like large golden snowflakes and Peter beamed over his scarf at you and knits his cold fingers with yours.

You smiled back, even though you felt a little uneasy, even though you were hopelessly out of your depth on this one. Aunt May's house was small but comfortable, orange glowing through the steamed up windows. Peter walked up the steps, still holding your fingers, and knocked.

Aunt May answered the door before he even finished knocking and engulfed him in a hug. She was small and wiry but bulked up in soft cardigans, with a bright smile that lit up her face. She was exactly how you would imagine a kindly old woman to look, but she looked nothing like Peter. Instead, you saw the similarities in the way she moved and acted, the way she brushed her son's cheek like he was something precious, the way she turned to you, to your uncovered face and bare, nobbled skin and brushed your cheek too, fingers papery and warm.

 

*

 

It's a soft evening, the day before your first fight. The streetlights are dim through the gauzy condensation on the windows and even the rumble of cars seems subdued. There are no lights on in your apartment, only the TV, which spreads colour across the both of you, wrapped tightly in a blanket like a cocoon. Two peas in a pod. He's finding it hard to speak.

“I was getting beaten up a lot back then,” Peter's voice sounds a little breathless. “Like… a lot. And… I don't know...” He draws away a little, rubbing his knuckles. You're so close you can feel his arms moving, the muscles tensing and relaxing. “I spent a lot of time in the library. I thought he was cool. He'd dyed his hair white, so I thought he was an old guy from a distance, but it turned out he was only about five, six years older than me.”

You feel a chill over your neck and draw the blanket a little higher. The television murmurs.

Peter rests his head on your shoulder. Aside from his red eyes, his face is near colourless, and he looks completely washed out.

“You don't have to finish,” you offer.

“Don't worry about it. It was years and years ago and I've already told a whole bunch of people, spoke at the trial and everything,” He sighs, “I don't even know why I'm thinking about it. It was a long time ago.” He shifts to press his forehead against the plane of your shoulder. His face is hot, but so is the rest of him. “I don't even know how _you_ knew about it, to be honest, I testified anonymously.”

“Takes one to know one,” you admit, quietly.

You can't hear your own voice over the television but you know he can. He presses his nose into the crook of your neck and breathes against your skin.

“It was just so _stupid_ of me,” He says, voice trembling, very slightly, “I should have just left when I saw those fucking porn mags, I should have left when I—when _he_ —...” He makes a choked noise like kicked cat and goes stiff. After a moment he relaxes again, shifting his arms to wrap around you. “Some honour student I am, huh? A real dumbass.”

You don't know what to say. You wish there was one thing you always wanted people to say to you when you told them so you could say it to Peter and everything would be better, but there isn't. You never wanted the people you told to say anything. To be honest, you didn't even want them to know.

You hold him, tightly. It's awkward, being this close, there is nowhere for your legs to go so they rest over each other, like a dropped octopus, and your hips are starting to hurt. It's really too hot for this, too and you're starting to sweat, you're starting to stick together. Peter lets out a shuddering sigh that makes your heart spike.

“What's his name?” you ask.

“What?” he asks, blinking blearily at you.

“His name? What is it?”

“What? Why do you even want to know?”

“I want to know so I can make a piñata out of him,” you lie.

He laughs and tucks his head under your chin. His hair is soft and tickles your windpipe. “I don't really remember. He called himself Skip, his first name was Simon or Steve or something, and his last name was… ah...” He scratches his temple, “Wess-something. I thought I would have remembered his name really well, but I guess not. Westcott, I think it was.”

You carded your hand through his hair, absently, and hummed. It’s difficult, the twisting in your chest, but he trusts you. He’s falling asleep against you right now, hair messed up and eyes drifting shut. He trusts you.

So of course, you end up ruining it.

 

*

 

You catch the fucker skulking around his apartment balcony, hair a greasy yellow rather than white, eyes lined and beady. He's smoking a cigarette that you shoot out of his hands, unfortunately missing his fingers. With one swing you launch him through his open balcony doors, his back colliding with a sofa which falls backwards.

It's too easy, a part of you enjoys it.

“I kn-know you,” Skip points, fingers shaking, “You're that—that mercenary! They said you were dead!”

You stalk towards him, spinning a gun around your finger. He looks like he's about to shit himself. Fuck it, every part of you enjoys this.

You shoot an ugly wall painting. The glass shatters and he screams, arms thrown over his head.

“Don't kill me!” He yelps. “Don't—please, please don't kill me!”

You snatch him up by the front of his shirt and get a whiff of him. He stinks of piss and a wet patch spreads over his khaki shorts. You're grinning your head off.

You press a gun to Steve Westcott's crotch just as you hear him.

“Deadpool,” He says, from the open window.

You look at him, and you find yourself, inexplicably angry at him. You know what he's going to say.

“Put the gun down,” Spiderman says, slowly stretching his legs to meet the concrete balcony, lowering himself.

“Spiderman!” Skip yelps, relief straining his voice. Spiderman controls his flinch, but you still notice it.

“Get out of here, Spiderman,” you say. “You can't stop me!”

It's true, as well. He lingers at the balcony window, touching the door-frame in several places, feet shifting. Someone who'd never met him might think him cautious, trying to talk someone out of a hostage situation, but you know him. He can't come into the apartment. He shifts his grip to hide his shaking fingers.

“Come on, Deadpool,” He said, his voice a little tired, a little fearful, “put the gun down and walk away. This isn't like you.”

It's exactly like you. Peter's words are making you angrier now, stoking the fire in your stomach. He makes no sense—he never made _any_ sense, painting you as having a thousand virtues and being beautiful, being kind. It's like he's in love with someone about your size and shape and he's just mistaken you for them. You're about to shoot some stranger in the nuts for him and he's convinced you're still above it.

You shove the gun harder into Skip's crotch and he squirms, kicking at you.

You're about to shoot when something catches you in the middle of your back and launches you into the new york air. It's a web—another and another web encases your body while you writhe, until you're bundled up like a baby, kicking and snarling, as Spiderman carries you six blocks and tosses you through the window.

You're out of the webs before he even touches down on the windowsill, and you're pissed as hell, grinding your teeth together and tossing your gun away because a part of you is terrified you'll kill him. You're losing control; it makes no sense and you hate it, you hate the way he forgives, the way he lives so perfectly and cleanly—and what in all hell gives him the right to act like Captain American when _he's just like you?_

You fight him like you hate him 'cause a part of you does. It's the same part that hates yourself. You break his cheekbone. It swells up in an instance and you see the kind of monster you really are reflected in his eyes and you hate that more than anything else.

And then you say it’s Over.

 

*

 

He doesn’t leave immediately. He hangs around long after he’s supposed to have moved out, picking up boxes and sorting out lamps. You keep waiting for him to say something, ask something, but he doesn’t. He just looks at you, expression odd and unreadable, and untangles wires and stacks books in boxes, slowly detaching himself from you.

 

*

 

He follows you to your new job, to your dull-as-dirt support group meetings, to avengers tower. It's easy to pretend you don't know anything and it's easy for him to pretend he doesn't know you've seen him, but you're both been doing this kind of thing for too long to believe it. You wonder if you should be upset about it, that he doesn't trust you completely. You told him it was over. Peter would be upset, in your situation. You aren't. You pause, deliberately not looking at a spot of red and blue in the corner of your eye and you can't help but find it comforting, in a way. Despite everything.

 

*

 

Peter’s doing better than you, he always did. You spot him, out of the corner of your eye, whenever you lurk around Avengers tower. (Yeah, they made you an avenger, despite everything. It’s mainly thanks to Peter).

He looks tired, but it’s no worse than normal, a dark shadow under his eyes, hair mussed in a permanent bed-head. He’s talking to Tony, gesturing a ghostly blue hologram of a mechanic part, talking quickly. He doesn’t notice you, but Tony does, and raises an eyebrow at you. You grin, and he turns back to Peter.

You slink back into the kitchen.

You’re not doing too well. Well, you aren’t the worst you’ve ever been—you dated Peter for a year and a half and during that time he somehow rooted good habits into you without you even realizing. You get up at seven, even if you don’t want to, you brush your teeth, and you go to work eventually and eat when you feel hungry. You don’t even realize you’re doing most of it until you’re half-way through, but all the good changes he’s left you with only make you more bitter.

You’re also well past hating him, solidly into familiar self-hatred territory now. It was a good idea though, to dump him. He deserved better than you anyway. You keep waiting for him to turn up with a new person on his arm, someone fresh and young and kind. He doesn’t. He’s a confusing guy.

You see him again, a day later, looking out of one of those ugly transparent lifts on the side of Avengers tower. You’re standing under an oak tree, surrounded by litter and leaves, and watching him watching you. His expression is still unreadable, but there’s something painful in his dark eyes. He shifts like he wants to look away but he doesn’t. He just watches you.

 

*

 

It’s funny to think back on it, but it took you nearly all of the first year to figure out he was Spiderman. He wasn’t trying to hide it from you, but instinct and a long life of having A Secret left him with strong habits. You never stumbled across his suit, buried in the bottom of Peter’s closet. When Spiderman waved at you, you waved back ’cause, hell, you like the guy. It’s not until you were back from work early and watched him actually climb through the window that you realized it.

“You’re Spiderman!” You blurted out.

Peter gave you that familiar odd look, like he was deciding whether to laugh or sigh. “Yeah?”

“I can’t believe I never realized,” You said, turning back to the apartment. It made a lot of sense, slotted perfectly into place.

“Wait, you didn’t know?” Peter shook his head, marveling at you, and then paused. “What about that party, though? At Tony’s? The first time we saw each other out of costume—you didn’t…?”

“No?” You said, “Wait, did you know back then?”

“Yeah,” A smile broke over Peter’s face, “Yeah, of course I knew. I’d known you for years by then. I already liked you.”

You smiled, goofily, and felt dumb and happy and pleased all at once.

 

*

 

The best love advice you ever got was from this girl you met six years ago in Oregon, who had hair like midnight, skin the colour of shadows in topaz and a deformity that covered a little less than half her face. The skin there was mottled and uneven, like something had eaten away at it, unearthing chinks of white cheekbone and an empty eye socket. Everyone said it was a birth defect, but you suspect it was an acid attack.

After picking pieces of you from an alleyway and literally sowing you back together, she’d sat with you by the ocean and waited for you to tell her everything. Back then it was Shiklah and Cable and Lady Death, but you imagine she would have said something similar now.

She’d laughed, and the sea had laughed in tandem, clatters and crashes of sound. “Good _God_ , Wilson,” She’d said, flipping her hair away from her face, “You have a way of making everything really fucking overcomplicated don’t you? Cut it out next time.”

 

*

Peter comes back in late autumn.

The trees are thin and light, spindly branches hanging empty in the chill of the air. The warmth of the simple heater doesn’t reach the walls anymore. There’s a snowstorm raging a few hundred miles north and you can see signs of it already, thick snow collecting quickly over the roads. There’s a knock at the door and you open it before you even think about it.

It’s him.

“Hey,” He says. He shifts a little on his feet.

“Hey,” you say, “There’s a big storm coming.”

He frowns a little at the non sequitur, but said nothing. He hangs around on the doormat, twitchy and unhappy, and scratches the back of his neck.

“You should really wear more than that,” You say, gesturing to the cardigan Peter’s wearing. You don’t really know what you are saying, or why you are saying it, but he relaxes.

“I don’t really get cold,” Peter says, and shrugged.

“Proportional thermoregulation of a spider,” you suggest.

“Spiders don’t internally thermoregulate,” he says, but smiles anyway.

You let him inside.

 

*

 

The second time you fight, it’s like a controlled explosion.

Your heart pounds in your chest, lungs tearing, trying (and failing) to hit him over and over, but everytime he’s already somewhere else before you finish the swing. He’s faster than you, shorter, and has a sixth sense that tells him when you’re going to hit and where. His jabs catch you in your ribs and you buckle, breathless, and he follows up with a kick to the head, behind the knees. You throw out and arm and flip yourself over, stumbling on the sticky mat.

He slinks back a step, fists still raised.

Fighting him is much harder than you expected. He’s used to this, bare-knuckle brawls, but fist-fights were never your strong point. And besides, it’s been years since you did any mercenary work and you’re starting to forget some things you thought was permanent.

You launch back at him, and he starts to redirect you, starts to fall back into hard-earned habits, so you make yourself unavoidable, beat him back until he hits the gym’s walls and sticks to them. He’s spread-eagled, like a squashed bug, hanging, from his fingertips and the tips of his toes, leaning towards you.

You kiss him. He’s soft and warm, hair slipping under your hands. You don’t go back to fighting that night.

 

*

 

It was about three years ago now, the first date you had.

That year had a lazy kind of spring, the kind that took its time sowing buds in the trees and clearing snow from the streets. Later, in august, the full power of summer would come suddenly and would flood New York with a swampy heat that everyone swore nearly killed them, but for now spring grew quietly and slowly. You were hanging around a coffee shop, not sure enough about the date to go in, but not worried enough to leave.

It had been about a week since you’d met Peter in Tony’s breezy apartment and you still weren’t sure where you stood with him. Peter had stolen your phone to get your number after you’d spent a full minute trying to decide whether or not to give him a fake number. You liked Peter, and if _you_ had been anyone else you would have given him your number in a heartbeat, but you’re you, you’re Wade Wilson, you practically had a diploma for being Unlucky in Love. Knowing your luck, he was undoubtedly a super villain of some kind. He’d been sweet to you, weirdly sweet, but maybe it had just been so long since you’d had a chance with someone you were just trying to sabotage it for yourself.

“Wade!” Peter called, running up to you. His nose was bright red and he was beaming at you, and all your misgivings were forgotten.

 

*

 

Peter moves back in before the storm hits. It’s surprisingly easy. The two of you slot back together, like puzzle pieces.

 

*

 

The first time you met him, _really_ met him, for the absolutely first time, you didn’t really like him. Back then he was Just Spiderman and you were Just Deadpool. You were robbing an underground mob that he was trying to follow up on a kidnapping of the Mayor's son. It was a pretty simple boy-meets-boy except you tried to shoot him.

He dodged, which turned out to be for the best, but you were really angry at him for it, at the time. You tried to shoot him again, for good measure. It didn’t work that time either. You couldn’t hit him, so you helped him instead. Kind-of. At the end of the day he had the mayor's son safely on his back and you had pockets and suitcases filled with hard cash.

“The police are coming to pick up the kid,” He told you, grimly. “You better hit the road.”

“You’re letting me off?” You asked.

“Not really, but I seriously doubt they’d be able to hold you in one police car,” He shifted the kid from his back onto his hip. “Besides, you did well today.”

“I stole four million,” You reminded him, flatly.

“Good doesn’t have to be altruistic to still be good,” He said.

“Oh, spidey~” You nearly swooned, “You do care!”

Spiderman shot him a tired look, scowling.

“Don’t worry Insy Wincy,” You assured him, “Today it’s letting me off for theft, tomorrow it’s letting me move in with you. I’m going to grow on you, just wait.”

“I seriously doubt that,” he said, dryly.


End file.
